By Mark DaCosta- Disallowing a question does not answer it, and in our National Assembly that distinction now matters more than ever. On 12 November 2026, Sherod Duncan, the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament, protested the decision to strike out ten of his questions on labour shortages, the recruitment of foreign workers and a proposed electronic identity requirement for employment. His. argument is that the reversal, whatever its technical basis, shields ministers from scrutiny on policies that touch the livelihoods of ordinary Guyanese. It is an argument that deserves serious attention.
The questions were Notice Papers 33 to 35 and 38 to 44. By Duncan’s account, they were published on 13 January and circulated to Members by the Clerk’s Office on 21 January. A letter dated 5 November then informed him that they were disallowed under Standing Order 20(1)(k), because they rested on statements made in the media.
The delay is the first thing worth examining. Nearly ten months separate circulation from disallowance. If the questions were defective, one must ask why the defect surfaced only after they had passed through the Clerk’s office and reached Members’ hands.
The subject matter is hardly marginal. Duncan’s questions arose from Government announcements on labour shortages, migration policy and the electronic identification proposal. One asked which categories of labour had recorded shortages over three years. Another asked whether a labour-market assessment had been updated to reflect migrant workers’ participation. A third asked whether the Government had finalised any policy requiring migrants to obtain an “Electronic Identity Card” before taking up employment. None invites speculation. Each seeks a fact the Government should hold.
The Speaker’s defenders have a procedural case. Parliamentary records show the Clerk reviews questions against Standing Order 20 and advises the Speaker, but the Speaker alone decides admissibility and is not required to give reasons for disallowing a question. The power therefore exists, and nothing suggests it was exercised outside the rules.
Yet legality and good governance are not the same thing. The media-sourcing ground sits uneasily with how modern governance works. Ministers announce policy at press conferences and in interviews, and the public learns of it through newspapers and broadcasts. If a Member may not question what a minister has said publicly because the press reported it, the Assembly cannot interrogate much of what the executive says. The press reports the announcement, but only Parliament can compel a formal answer.
Nor is this an isolated episode. In March, the Speaker disallowed a separate motion by Duncan on media access to the House, citing alleged inaccuracies and bias in its preamble. In October, Duncan said the Clerk had requested procedural modifications to another set of his questions before they went to the Speaker. Taken together, these episodes give the opposition reason to suspect that the filter is tightening, though that pattern is Duncan’s reading and the Speaker has not, on the record I have seen, answered it.
The remedy Duncan proposes is modest. He asks for a full explanation of what changed after publication, and for the chance to repair any faulty introductory wording while keeping the substantive questions alive. If the objection concerns phrasing, correction is a proportionate response. Removing the questions entirely is not.
There is a wider point about how our National Assembly meets. A legislature that sits infrequently has few opportunities to hold ministers to account, so each unanswered question is a lost opportunity. For workers who may soon need a new identity card to get a job, and for employers recruiting from abroad, silence is no answer.
Ministers remain accountable to the people of our nation, and the policies they have announced do not vanish when a question is struck from the record. The Speaker owes Members and citizens a sound rationale for why clarity is now to be withheld. Until that rationale is given, the public is entitled to wonder what the Assembly’s scrutiny is for.
